Surgical instrument storage and sterilization systems are known. These systems, sometimes referred to as surgical instrument trays or surgical instrument kits/sets, typically consist of metal or plastic trays that hold a variety of general purpose and/or procedure specific surgical instruments such as forceps, scissors, clamps, retractors, scalpels, etc. These trays are brought into the operating room (OR) when preparing for surgery, and also are used as a means to organize, transport and store surgical instruments in a medical facility as well as to house instruments during sterilization.
Often medical facilities do not sterilize and maintain their own surgical instrument kits. In this case, sterilization, maintenance and other instrument operations are performed at a centralized location such as an instrument company's distribution center. In order to move multiple surgical instruments trays between such distribution centers and user sites such as hospitals, universities and other medical facilities, several trays are transported in a containers known as shipping totes. A shipping tote is usually a large bin, made of plastic or other durable, lightweight material that is sized of suitable dimensions to carry two or more instrument trays inside. Carrying multiple trays in a single tote reduces the number of manual operations that must be performed in processing instrument trays. Furthermore, instrument trays intended for a particular location and/or surgical procedure may be grouped together. Shipping totes also permit transport by conventional courier, allowing processing facilities to contract out delivery and pickup to Federal Express, UPS, the USPS or other courier companies.
Before transporting a shipping tote, a bar coded shipping label is sometimes prepared that identifies certain information relevant to the shipment such as the point of origin, the destination, and possibly the contents of the tote, i.e., the identification number of each surgical instrument tray contained in the tote. The bar coded label allows the tote to be easily and efficiently tracked and entered into or out of inventory at the processing facility. These labels are sometimes referred to as “air bills.”
As the cost, complexity and number and number of surgical instruments increases, businesses continue to look to automated techniques to increase efficiency and reduce operating overhead. Recently, radio frequency identification (RFID) techniques have become popular as an inventory and tracking technology because RFID does not require line of sight and is capable of storing more information than a bar code label. However, even with such technology, their exists a need for control systems that can integrate such new technologies with existing inventory and business intelligence systems.
The description herein of various advantages and disadvantages associated with known apparatus, methods, and materials is not intended to limit the scope of the invention to their exclusion. Indeed, various embodiments of the invention may include one or more of the known apparatus, methods, and materials without suffering from their disadvantages.